The present application incorporates in its entirety all the disclosures of U.S. Patent Application 2014-0019246 A1 filed on Jul. 13, 2012 and titled “Method and Apparatus for Location Based conditional offers.”
The present application incorporates in its entirety all the disclosures of U.S. Patent Application US 20130015236 filed on Jul. 15, 2011 and titled “High-value document authentication system and method.”
The present application incorporates in its entirety all the disclosures of U.S. Patent Application US20140229735 filed on Aug. 8, 2012 and titled “Managing device ownership and commissioning in public-key encrypted wireless networks.”
The present application incorporates in its entirety all the disclosures of U.S. Patent Application US20130085941 filed on Sep. 30, 2011 and titled “Systems and methods for secure wireless financial transactions.”
The present application incorporates in its entirety all the disclosures of U.S. Patent Application US20110258443 filed on Jul. 23, 2010 and titled “User authentication in a tag-based service.”
A geofence is a virtual perimeter for a real-world geographic area. A geofence can be dynamically generated as in a radius around a point location. A geofence can also be a predefined set of boundaries connecting points expressed by latitude and longitude, like school attendance zones or neighborhood boundaries. Geofencing has been made possible especially by the introduction of GPS (Global Positioning System) technology and the miniaturization of electronic components that have made the locationing functionality a standard feature in Mobile Phones and portable electronics in general (User Equipment).
In some enactments, geofencing is used for security purposes for example to provide security to wireless local area networks. In some other applications, when a location-aware device in a location-based service (LBS) enters or exits a geofence the device may receive a generated warning. This notice might contain information about the location of the device. The geofence notice might be sent to a mobile telephone, an email account, or a web site. Geofencing, when used with child location services, can alert parents when a child leaves a selected area. In other implementations, geofencing allows users of the system to draw zones around places of work, customer's sites and secure areas. The crossing of these geofences by an equipped vehicle can trigger a notification to a user or operator via SMS, Email or any other digital indication. The zones can also be linked to equipment within a vehicle and such equipment can stop a vehicle's engine.
Geofences or areas in general can be defined not only by means of GPS positioning but also by many other different techniques. For example, the range of a radio communication link type employed by an Access Point or a Base Station could be a way to define the perimeter of an area. The gradient of radio signal strength could be used for defining different and overlapping concentrically situated zones. Furthermore, the radio link employed by Access Point or Base Station could be of many different types, e.g. Wi-Fi, GSM, WCDMA, LTE, CDMA, RF-ID and Bluetooth, just to cite a few non-limiting examples. The person skilled in the art will understand that geofences can have many different shapes and be defined by means of many different techniques.
Location can be provided by many different techniques, for example triangulation with different Access Points or cellular Base Stations or signal strength data from various Access Point/Base Stations coupled with databases storing the location of various reference points.
For the purpose of the present application, the terms “2-D barcode”, “2D barcode”, “matrix barcode” or “optical codes” are synonymous and generally refer to a two dimensional barcode with encoded information that a scanner may read both horizontally and vertically. There are a variety of different 2D barcodes including, but not limited to Quick Response Codes (hereinafter “QR code”), Data Matrix codes, Aztec codes, MaxiCode, Semacode tags, Cauzin Softstrip codes, EZcode, High Capacity Color Barcode (HCCB), CyberCode, Mobile Multi-Coloured Composite (MMCC), Dot codes, PDF417 symbols, ShotCode, SPARQCode, WaterCode, Trusted Paper Key (TPK), and the like.
One of the most popular 2D barcode is the QR code (Quick Response). It is a matrix code created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave. It is a two-dimensional bar code that can store data, such as plain text, mobile telephone numbers along with a SMS message, contact cards (e.g. VCards), geographic information, images and other information. Its original purpose was to track vehicles during manufacture. It was designed to allow high-speed component scanning Although initially used for tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing, QR codes are now used in commercial and personal applications with mobile-phone users. Many 2D barcodes have been optimized for use with smart phones so that they can be read quickly and accurately.
QR codes became an international standard in June 2000: ISO/IEC18004. They were also approved by GS1, an international standardization organization, as a standard for mobile phones in December 2011. The content of these standards is hereby incorporated by reference.
In some implementations, QR codes storing addresses and Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) may appear in magazines, on business cards, documents, or on almost any object about which users might want information. Users with a Smartphone equipped with the correct reader application can scan the image of the QR code to display text, contact information, connect to a wireless network, or open a web page in the telephone's browser. QR codes can be linked to a location to track where a code has been scanned. Either the application that scans the QR code retrieves the geo information by using GPS and cell tower triangulation (aGPS) or the URL encoded in the QR code itself is associated with a location.
Static QR codes, the most common type, are typically used to disseminate information to the public. They are frequently displayed in advertising materials, on television and in newspapers and magazines. A code's administrator can track information about the number of times a code was scanned and the associated action that have been taken, along with the times of scans and the operating system of the devices that scanned it.
While in a static QR code, the destination URL is placed into the QR code and cannot be altered, a dynamic QR code offers more functionality. The owner can edit the information associated with the QR code. For example, the owner of the code can modify the web address to which the QR code is pointing. Such codes can track more specific information, including the scanner's name and email address, how many times they scanned the code and, in conjunction with tracking codes on a website, conversion rates. In a Dynamic QR Code, a short URL is placed into a QR code that then transparently re-directs the user to the intended destination website URL. The short URL redirection destination URL can be changed after the QR code has been created.
Some 2D barcodes may contain information in an encrypted form. One cryptographic technique is known as the public key cryptographic system. One particular form of such a system is fully described and discussed in the basic article entitled “A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public Key Cryptosystems” by R. L. Rivest, A. Shamir and L. Adelmann, Volume 21 #2, February 1978, Communications of ACM pages 120-126. This system is referred to as the RSA public key cryptosystem.
Public key techniques, as described in the article “Public Key Cryptography” by John Smith, in the January 1983 edition of Byte Magazine, pages 189-218, include two different kinds of keys: encryption keys and decryption keys. These keys includes the properties that: (a) it is possible to compute a pair of keys including an encryption key and a decryption key; (b) such that, for each pair, the decryption key that is not the same as the encryption key; and (c) it is not feasible to compute the decryption key even from the knowledge of the encryption key. The name “public key” is derived from the fact that each party's encryption key is available to all parties subscribing to the particular public key network involved. Public key cryptographic systems are designed for the direct communication between any two subscribing parties, each party having an unpublished decryption key and a published encryption key. With public-key encryption, a message is encrypted with a recipient's public key. The message cannot be decrypted by anyone else who does not possess the matching private key. The owner of the private key is uniquely associated with the public key.
The public key cryptographic system has also found use in providing accurate identification of the source of a document. A sender can sign a message by first encrypt the message, or an authenticating portion thereof, such as, for example, the name of the sender using the private decryption key of the sender and then encrypt the message with the public encryption key of the receiving party. The outcome is a portion of the message that only an authorized sender could have created and only an authorized receiver can read.
With digital signatures, a message is signed with the sender's private key and can be verified by anyone who has access to the public key of the sender. This verification proves that the sender had access to the private key, and therefore is likely to be the person associated with the public key. This ensures that the message has not been tampered with, as any manipulation of the message will result in changes to the encoded message summary, which otherwise remains unchanged between the sender and receiver.
Throughout history, one of the tasks undertaken by many people and organizations has been proving the authenticity of documents or objects especially in times when many technologies offer the opportunity for forgeries. In certain implementations, certain documents are associated with tangible or intangible objects, for example artwork. Some artists use certificates of authenticity as means to prove authenticity of their artworks. The certificates may contain information such as title, medium, date, signature or other attributes that can make a buyer comfortable with buying an artwork. Paradoxically in the world of art, a certificate of authenticity may sometimes be regarded as more valuable than the artwork itself, since an artwork without its accompanying certificate may lose most of its value.
A certificate of authenticity is a document that an art collector can hold onto and is proof of an artwork's genuineness. There is no rule that says that artists have to produce certificates of authenticity, but they do add a layer of value and trust for an artist. They also make artworks easier to exchange over the art market.
Many techniques have been disclosed to prove the authentication of documents that may serve the purpose of furthering business transactions. For example, patent application “System and method for verifying authenticity of documents,” U.S. 20130247218 A1, published on Sep. 19, 2013, includes incorporating a machine-readable code such as a QR code to a document, storing useful information that assists in verifying the authenticity on a secure document verification system. The machine code, which may contain a secure uniform resource locator (URL), optionally along with other information regarding the document, can then be scanned by a reader such as a camera attached to a computing device, for example a smart-phone; the computing device would then, on extracting the URL, redirect to the secure document verification system which then reveals the document or relevant information regarding the document, which accordingly verifies the authenticity of the document. The teachings of this application are hereby incorporated by reference.
Some techniques have been disclosed where the possibility of acceptance of a business offers has been restricted to a predetermined area. For example, patent application U.S. 20140019246, “Method and Apparatus for Location Based Conditional Offers”, of the same inventor as the present application, filed on Jul. 13, 2012, limits the possibility of acceptance of a business offer to a predetermined area.
The detailed description of the drawings that follows is represented largely in terms of processes and symbolic representations of operations by conventional computer components, including a processor, memory storage devices for the processor, connected display devices and input devices. Furthermore, these processes and operations may utilize conventional computer components in a heterogeneous distributed computing environment; including remote file servers, computer servers, publishing resources, and/or memory storage devices.
Most services in a heterogeneous distributed computing environment can be grouped into one of these major categories: distributed file system, distributed computing resources, and messaging. A distributed file system provides a client with transparent access to part of the mass storage of a remote network device, such as a server. Distributed computing resources provide a client with access to computational or processing power of remote network devices, such as a cloud server.
Reference is made in detail to the description of the embodiments as illustrated in the drawings. Particular embodiments described in this application provide specific case implementations of document authentication by scanning 2D barcode labels affixed to a particular document. While embodiments are described in connection with the drawings and related descriptions, there is no intent to limit the scope to the embodiments disclosed herein. On the contrary, the intent is to cover all alternatives, modifications, and equivalents.
The present invention draws synergies and advantageously adds to the above-mentioned technologies, concepts and observations providing a method, a system and an apparatus to, e.g., improve customary methods of authenticating documents and/or items, and/or furthering business transactions and/or enabling secure functionalities associated to documents and/or items.